Morning Breath May 8

Good morning. Happy Tuesday.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mixed and with an up bias. India dropped 2.2%; there were no other 1% movers. Europe is currently mostly down. Austria is up 1.7%; Greece is down another 3%. Futures here in the States point towards a slight down open for the cash market.
The dollar is up slightly. Oil and copper are down. Gold and silver are down.
Spain is bailing out its third largest bank. HSBC, Europe’s largest bank, reported net profit of $2.58B (down from $4.15B a year ago).
Yesterday wasn’t a horrible day. The Asian/Pacific markets suffered stiff losses. Greece fell 7%. The incumbent in France lost. Europe overall dropped. The US markets had an excuse to cave but they didn’t. The lows were established early, and the indexes closed mostly flat on the day. Closing flat on a day when lots of negative news is out is a good performance. It’s not good enough to turn me bullish, but it’s good enough to take note. Here’s an update of the 30-min S&P chart. Support still sits at 1360 and 1340.

But as bad as sentiment has gotten recently, let’s back up and remind ourselves what the intermediate term charts look like. In all cases below, I’d consider the indexes to be in 2-month consolidation patterns. It’s entirely possible they break down; it’s also possible a hint of good news moves them back up. Lots of bad news has hit lately, and the market has not broken.
Contributed by Jason Leavitt. www.leavittbrothers.com